Rap Satirist Tim Fite Takes On Tech

The digital life is the target of his latest record, ‘iBeenHACKED’

Brooklyn rapper
Tim Fite
got his first smartphone just three years ago—beginning a love-hate relationship with technology that’s taken over not only much of his life but his musical career.

He realized how much he relied on the phone when he started feeling phantom vibrations in his pants pocket even when he wasn’t carrying it. That was the genesis of “iBeenHACKED,” a satirical new album and visual art project exploring the encroachment of digital culture on our lives.

“It goes beyond being a cultural force to being a physical hack,” says Mr. Fite, 37, who didn’t even have a cellphone until 2006 and will self-release the album Tuesday. “These objects, this way of living, this online thing, it’s taking over our bodies.”

After delving deeply into digital culture as research for “iBeenHACKED,” Mr. Fite was troubled and amused by the effects of constant connectivity on the ways people interact, but he was most struck by how little pop music had dealt with it. “The record could have been five million songs long,” says the rapper, whose 2007 skewering of commercialism, “Over the Counter Culture,” landed on several critics’ best-of lists.

Tim Fite - iBeenHACKED
Brody and Cody

He has been releasing albums since 2001, when he was part of the hip-hop duo Little-T and One Track Mike, whose song “Shaniqua” spawned a popular video on MTVu. Later, as a solo artist, he signed to Anti- Records, with whom he fulfilled his contract in 2012.

Mr. Fite’s 18-track new album intercuts songs with real and fake product pitches meant to mimic the experience of wading through advertisements to view content online. The tunes are built around swift, clapping beats with flourishes from synthesizers and guitar, as Mr. Fite delivers biting and frequently explicit lyrics in a dry, comic tone. “So Pavlovian / I’m looking at my phone again / I’ll never be alone again,” he rhymes on “Check Yo Cell,” a song about phone-checking compulsion.

He also raps about the way people trumpet their taste online on “Like,” how relationships are reduced to four emoticons on “Smiley Winkey Angry Sad Face” and the fetishization of
Apple
products on “Big MAC.” (Speakeasy: Hear “Like” and “Big MAC”)

Related Coverage

“Things are rolling so fast that we get rid of a perfectly good piece of technology because it’s being replaced by an even better one,” Mr. Fite says during an interview in a Manhattan Apple store just before the company released the iPhone 6. “I don’t know about that. It’s like the dude who has the best girlfriend in the world, but he’s always looking somewhere else. Does anybody like that dude? No. Everybody hates that dude.”

There’s also a visual component to “iBeenHACKED.” Mr. Fite spent a week in a Chicago glass studio making fused-glass iPhone replicas called “Phoneys,” a “technology surrogate” to help wean people away from constantly checking their devices.

Phoneys were among the rewards Mr. Fite offered in exchange for donations to fund the album through the Web platform Kickstarter, where he raised $3,050 more than his $15,000 goal. He ended up at the Chicago Glass Collective after meeting the owner,
Leslie Speicher,
at a concert he performed in Chicago. She says Mr. Fite quickly learned the basics of fusing glass during the week he spent in her studio.

Mr. Fite, a Rutgers graduate and former AmeriCorps volunteer, also did a residency in April with the Beam Center, a youth-oriented community arts group in Brooklyn. Besides making Phoneys to reward his Kickstarter supporters, he gave them “text messages” written on a typewriter and mailed. Mr. Fite also created a giant smartphone-themed window display. One day he stood in the window and responded to prompts from passersby, who could use a large cutout of a hand to swipe the “screen” and touch different buttons. “It was fun, and it was funny,” says Brian Cohen, co-director of the Beam Center.

Mr. Fite recognizes the irony of making and promoting “iBeenHACKED” by embracing the same technology he’s satirizing, but says that was always part of his plan. “To actually get beyond it, right, in order to really understand what it means, you need to be a part of it,” he says.

‘Boo’d Up’ Becomes Summer’s Sleeper Hit

“Boo’d Up,” Ella Mai’s tribute to falling in love, has spent the summer on Billboard’s Hot 100, an unusual feat considering it came out over a year ago.

With their blurring of genres and eagerness to defy gender norms, women like Grimes, Kali Uchis, Billie Eilish and U.S. Girls are changing the music industry.

Click to Read Story

Advertisement

For T Bone Burnett, a Burst of Creativity at 70

T Bone Burnett is one of America’s most acclaimed music producers, but after years of working on other artists’ projects, he is now focusing on his own.

Click to Read Story

How Billboard’s New Rules Could Change the Song of the Summer

Billboard is changing how songs place on its Hot 100 chart by giving more weight to paid streams than free or ad-supported ones.

Click to Read Story

Grammy Awards to Expand Field for Top Prizes

The Grammy Awards is expanding the number of nominees for its top awards, a move intended to broaden the kinds of artists it recognizes and one that could result in more female, country and rock musicians up for high-profile prizes.